Volunteers work at park
BUTLER TWP — By 9 a.m. Tuesday morning, as volunteers still trickled into the parking lot, the first truck load of brush was already leaving the grounds of Preston Park.
It would be the first of many to be hauled away, as nearly 50 volunteers swarmed the park to clear brush, paint and stain benches and bridges, and trim trees as part of the United Way of Butler County’s Days of Caring program.
Cleanup work at Preston Park is nothing new, thanks to a dedicated group of volunteers known as the Monday Morning Cleanup Crew, but the United Way’s program injects an extra flurry of activity, much-needed power tools and equipment, and dozens of extra helping hands into the effort.
Township Commissioner Dave Zarnick, who was on hand Tuesday to welcome the volunteers — all on loan from Butler area businesses — called their work essential to the park.
“If it wasn’t for groups like this and our volunteers, we wouldn’t be able to maintain this park,” Zarnick said. “What these organizations do for us in a day or two days, we wouldn’t be able to accomplish in six months.”
Zarnick said employees from three businesses, People’s TWP, Baglier Buick and CW Howard Insurance, donated their time.
Peoples TWP donated tools and equipment to the effort, which included tree trimming and painting and staining Long Bridge as well as some painting and cleanup at Butler Township Park on South Duffy Road.
The Days of Caring cleanup, led by Tony Stagno, Dave Heltzell and Al Gladis, who head up the park’s regular Monday Morning Cleanup Crew, takes months to plan, Zarnick said. The township develops a master plan which it submits to both the United Way and the companies involved, which vet the work and make sure everything is safe for volunteers.
“It’s a massive undertaking,” Zarnick said. “It’s a week of caring, but it takes us months to prepare.”
Behind-the-scenes work aside, volunteers on Tuesday said they keep coming back for a simple reason: they like helping to keep the park beautiful.
“It gets us out and doing different things,” said Cindy Martsolf, a warranty administrator at Baglier. “I just like doing it to help out.”
Martsolf and other employees from the company have been participating in the program for at least six years, they said. On Tuesday, a group of five was helping to stain Long Bridge.
Just up the trail from Martsolf’s group, dozens of Peoples TWP employees were helping to cut down and haul away unwanted trees from Preston’s grounds — an effort that’s organized each year by Beverly Wogan, the company’s administrative coordinator of community relations. She called the project an easy sell to employees.
“When I say ‘Preston Park,’ people perk up. This is one of the favorite events for our company,” Wogan said. “I think they feel this is something that is in their comfort zone.”
The company sent 38 employees to Preston Tuesday.
LeeAnn Rodgers and Jennifer Marnic, who are both employees at insurer CW Howard, said they participate because they want to help preserve the park for future generations.
“I just like to see a difference,” Marnic said. “I honest-to-God didn’t even know this was all back here.”
Four employees from the company would spend Tuesday helping paint and clean areas of Butler Township Park.
Kierston Hobaugh, executive director of the United Way, said 232 volunteers will participate in projects at 10 locations around Butler County as part of the program, which runs from Sunday through Saturday.
